for a squeeze play like that. He'd be able to make his own terms, wouldn't he? Including squaring the charges against him?"

"Just about any terms he dictated," grated the detective.

"Why tell me this?"

Grannar's eyes narrowed. "You want Roper for your own good reasons. I want him for mine. My hands are tied but yours are not. If you want him, go after him. I'll help, short of risking my job. I'm offering to make a deal with you. It occurs to me that a couple of smart men could make a real killing by knowing the right time to buy a few shares of stock in transuranics. A man like me might even make enough to retire to Earth, comfortably."

"You're beginning to make sense," said Torry. "What makes you so sure I'll cut you in for a slice?"

Grannar laughed harshly. "My nuisance value, for one thing. My usefulness for another. I'm an honest cop. But there's nothing in the rule book that says I can't pick up valuable information on the side while I'm doing my job. And nothing that says I can't put pressure on you to help me do it. Besides, why should you balk at doing me a favor when you're doing yourself one at the same time?"

"I'm still listening."

"New to Mars, aren't you?"

"New enough. I've been here before, but a long time ago and not for long then. Why?"

"Do you know anything about the local set-up, the governments?"

"Not much. It's a kind of anarchy, I think. The big companies and even the labor racketeers have private armies like the old goon squads. Legal government is just a front for feudal gangs, with the police sitting politely on the lid. Lobbies and pressure groups are the real bosses. Is that right?"

Grannar whistled his aimless Martian tune. "You said it. I didn't. Not out loud. I never even think it in a room that might have microphones or scanners. Mars is interesting, beautiful, with shreds and tatters of an old, picturesque culture clinging to ivy-patterns to the new, modern, cosmopolitan, industrial set-up. It says that in the books and travel ads. Out here in the clean and lifeless air of a worn-out planet I can have the precarious luxury of hating it. I want out, and you're going to help me get out."

"Why stay anyhow?"

"Because I'm a cop and it's the only job I know. And bad as it is, 

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